If you're up there performing a song for the first time, it's as if you're hearing it through their ears. You become acutely self-conscious of the song in performance, so that's a good thing before recording. But I like to have some surprises for the audience; I don't want the audience to know everything that's going to be on the record, because these days, with the Internet, people become avid collectors of pre-knowledge.

I'm always making a conscious effort to be viable and accessible.

They came in the thousands from the whole human race to pay their respects at his last resting place.

People want to hear about the extremes of human nature. They want things that are larger than their own lives, and more romantic, and not necessarily of their own experiences.

All audiences should be slightly off balance.

I try to make songs visual and tactile to kind of put you into the action.

If you're up on a stage, naked and solo and singing songs to people, there's not much place to hide, so you may as well confess what you want to confess and say what you want to say, whatever that is. Some songs just turn out as being more about me, and some are more through the eyes of other people, or third-person descriptions of people.